Garden Apartments
The History of a Low-Rent Utopia

By (author) Joshua B. Freeman

ISBN13: 9780226841793

Imprint: University of Chicago Press

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Format: Hardback

Published: 23/12/2025

Availability: Not yet available

Description
How a form of multifamily housing with idealistic roots became a ubiquitous model promoted by both public entities and private developers.   Eminent historian Joshua Freeman rescues garden apartments—typically low-rise multifamily residences that enclose or are surrounded by landscaped gardens—from their invisibility in the American landscape. He details their outsized influence on housing policy and social policy, as they have helped to reduce class and income inequality. Though partly influenced by the architectural innovations and socialist politics of British garden cities, “Red Vienna,” and German modernist housing in the 1920s, these large, centrally managed projects were mostly not public housing, but their capitalist developers worked with governments to keep down rents. The results were often relatively small apartments and large communal spaces, aimed at fostering actual American community.
Introduction 1 Utopian Roots 2 The Garden City Comes to America 3 New Deal Housing 4 The Garden Apartment Goes to War 5 Garden Apartments Everywhere 6 The Experience of Community 7 Aftermath Conclusion: Garden Apartments and the Politics of Change Acknowledgments Notes Illustration Credits Index
  • Residential buildings, domestic buildings
  • History of the Americas
  • Professional & Vocational
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Weight:454.00
List Price: £92.00